“Not Beard. Not anymore,” she replied hastily. Not ever really. “My name is Alyse. Alyse Bell.”
She had never felt like Alyse Beard. She was Alyse Bell. Always had been. Even if legally she was not.
Now, she supposed, she bore yet another name . . .
A name she didn’t even know. How strange was that? She didn’t even know the name by which the world identified her.
He made a noncommittal sound. “Very well. Alyse Bell.” Apparently he was in agreement that they didn’t share a name either. There was that at least.
He continued, “Don’t think this means anything. We are not truly bound to one another.”
She opened her mouth several times but then closed it, bewildered, unsure how to respond. He was in possession of a bill of sale that said differently.
A beat of silence passed before he added, as though sensing her confusion, “I am not your husband.” His gaze was almost cruel in that moment, eyes blazing a dark blue in the obscurity of his unshaven face, like a dark loch, promising untold secrets. “Let us be clear. You are not my wife.”
Chapter 5
And the dove blinked, rotating and testing her cramped wings within her new cage.
There was no misunderstanding his words, but that did not lessen her confusion.
He’d bought her like a sack of grain, and he had a deed of sale to prove it.
What kind of man bought a woman at auction, but did not want her?
She was no longer Mrs. Beard. Like it or not, she belonged to this stranger. She was his even if he didn’t want her.
“Doesn’t it, though? Mean something?” She moistened her lips. “There is . . . documentation. A bill of sale?” She glanced in the direction of the village. She could still hear Mr. Hines’s voice in her head, his words ringing in her ears. Sold!
If that didn’t mean anything to him, then where did that leave her? Free? Dare she hope that he meant to let her go?
Her hand moved to her throat, brushing the skin there. She could imagine she still felt the fraying rope, thick and choking, sawing into her skin. Staring at this man, she did not feel free. She felt trapped as ever.
“Perhaps this rural little backwater may consider a wife auction a legitimate method to marry two people.” She could hear the sneer in his voice. “But I assure you, the civilized world will not recognize what a bunch of provincials deem a wedding.”
She bristled. Pride stiffened her spine. He uttered the word provincials like it was something dirty on his tongue. She was certain he considered herself one of said provincials. He might as well have called them all idiots. She didn’t know whether to be insulted or relieved. Relieved, she supposed, if he did not consider this arrangement binding and it gained her freedom.
She resisted pointing out that her father had been a schoolmaster and that she had been reading and writing and speaking French quite well by the age of five. She might not have traveled outside this little hamlet and she might be as poor as a church mouse but she was no idiot. She kept that to herself, though. Let him think her a provincial. Someone of no value. She didn’t want to persuade him into keeping her.
“By all means, if you think you have no obligation to me, don’t let me keep you.” She motioned in the direction of the snow-draped road even as her mind feverishly started working through what she would do once he left her here. Specifically, how could she acquire the funds to reach London? And assuming she did, how would she subsist there while she looked for employment?
Mr. Beard didn’t want her anymore. He’d made that abundantly clear. Even though he’d made a pretty penny selling her she knew he would not part with any of it to help her. Mrs. McPherson flashed across her mind. The widow would likely take a broom to her if she even spotted her approaching the house. She’d clearly staked her claim on Mr. Beard and she did not want Alyse lingering.
Nellie would want to help but it was doubtful her young husband would permit it. As apprentice to the blacksmith, they could barely fend for themselves. Also, they had another baby on the way. Alyse couldn’t burden them.
Her Not Husband narrowed his eyes. He considered her for a long moment, his expression dark and brooding, impossible to read.
Alyse waited for him to mount his horse and leave her, certain he was on the verge of doing that very thing.
“I did not say I have no obligation to you. I accept my responsibility,” he finally said, his blue eyes as grim and solemn as an undertaker.
And she, presumably, was a responsibility?
“What does that mean precisely?” she asked distrustfully. He’d dismissed the legitimacy of their union, after all. What did he consider them to be if not man and wife?
“We can work out some manner of arrangement. Is there somewhere you would like to go? Do you have any family . . .”
“To foist me upon?” she finished bitingly.
He hesitated before nodding. “In a manner . . . yes.”
She resisted pointing out that if she had any family to rely upon she would never have found herself at the center of a wife auction. He did not know anything about her, though. For all he knew, her family was the kind that gladly let one of their own be sold in a sordid public display.
He didn’t know she was an orphan. He would not know she’d had loving parents once upon a time who were rolling over in their graves because she was in a predicament such as this. The thought of her parents was almost enough to undo her.
She took a shuddering breath and tried not to think of them. “No. I have nothing. No one.” She pointed at her valise on his horse and wondered why it stung her pride so much to admit that to him. Her pride had already suffered such a thorough stomping today. She did not think it could still feel anything.
She had been wrong.
“That is everything,” she added. “My life is in that bag.”
He stared to where she pointed, his forehead furrowing. “No friends or—”
“No one,” she snapped.
He digested that and asked, “Then is there somewhere I could escort you?” Even as he asked, his eyes glittered with frustration. Perhaps anger. He didn’t want to be here with her. Her chin went up a notch higher. Well, that made two of them. “Some place you would like to go?”
Where she would like to go? As though it was that simple. As though her life was full of so very many choices?
“I should like to go to London.” Since he was asking, she might as well be honest.
He winced. “I’ve come from there and I’m not going back. At least not any time soon.”
She laughed once roughly, the sound pulling at the back of her throat. That would be her luck. He came from the place she most wished to go. “Any place then. Preferably a larger city.”
Somewhere she could lose herself. So that she might find herself.
He gave his head the slightest shake. “So am I to understand you have nothing? No distant relations? No funds?”
She fidgeted. “Yes.”
“So I could take you somewhere but there would be nothing waiting for you once you arrived there.”
Was he saying this so that she could feel . . . better?
She held his stare, knowing she was soliciting his pity and hating him right then. She suspected she had already done that once today when she stood on a block wearing a halter. Her dignity begged for a reprieve and she didn’t want him feeling obligated toward her. “Yes,” she answered slowly. “That would be true, but I can fend for myself.”
“Can you?” Skepticism laced his voice. He crossed his arms as though he really were seeing her. Seeing how very pathetic and alone she was and she despised that.
She squared her shoulders, trying to look more. Bigger. Stronger.
He scanned her, unmoving. “Have you any skills that would make you desirable for employment?”
She angled her head sharply and suppressed a snort of derision. “You were at the auction, were you not? I think you heard the extolling of my attributes.”